It was recently revealed that Trump’s backers made extensive use of algorithms to influence public opinion during the election. Algorithms are used extensively to interface with the world – to navigate, invest, research, create friendships, and learn. They also act as a filter, by analyzing users’ predilections and surrounding them with similars. This presents questions such as what biases are programmed into the algorithm, and whether the infoscape surrounding users leads to a certain mode, or conformity, of thought. This may also be an issue with artistic expression and aesthetics. Clearly, ideas expressed through art are a product of life-experience. Can this experience and the response to it, if largely mediated by algorithms, be manipulated? Is the same true of aesthetics?

With this series, an algorithm is given a standard photographic representation, and is asked to recreate parts of the image that have been removed. It uses what information is left to create a new image, expressing a formal sense and the aesthetic biases programmed within.